In-plane Behaviour of Multi-Leaf Masonry Walls Studied by Means of a Simple Rigid Block Model

In this short contribution, a simplified and effective approach for studying the in-plane behaviour of multi-leaf masonry panels is proposed. Adopting an existing refined rigid block model for studying masonry panels with regular texture, which subdivides blocks into equal portions by adding new interfaces representing potential vertical cracks, the proposed approach allows for modeling two or three wall layers or leaves made of element portions having the same geometry, but with varying interface typologies and characteristics. In this way, the computational effort for studying a multi-leaf panel is limited to the post-processing phase related to interface forces determination, especially in the case of material nonlinearity. Numerical tests are performed to show the effectiveness of the approach by studying in-plane loaded masonry panels with two leaves and three leaves with rubble core.